1993 was
a busy year, taken up with European gigs with Captain in
France, Switzerland, Germany and the UK - the linup now
included one Gary Dreadful on drums (who I'd named after a johnny
rock 'n' roll Comic Strip character) and an eccentric keyboard
player called Malcom who frequently took delight in revealing an
even smaller knob than Captain's. The tours produced just enough
money and much laughter, and a sizeable chunk of what we did earn always
ended up being traded in for cases of red wine in the Calais hypermarkets.
Once, being short of space for the bevvy on a return journey, Captain
and I voted we chuck out some of Gary's drumkit to make room but
he started to get upset, so we got rid of the stage set instead.

I also headed out to Spain with the Hot Rods - Barrie
was back on vocals and well together, which was more than could be said
for Graeme. He spent the entire tour moaning, wore the same clothes
onstage and off, took to shooting up his insulin jabs in the middle of
restaurants, and scratching his nose or lighting a fag when he should
have been soloing. It didn't go down well with the punters or the promotors,
and we decided that if the Rods were to continue it would have
to be without him, which is where Gordon Russel came in. Gordon
had spent many years with
our old mates Dr Feelgood (we'd also tried out another former Feelgoods
guitarist Steve Walwyn, but he wanted rather more money than we
could offer plus had a worrying fixation with the Daily Telegraph) and
was up for grabs. I sent him a cassette of Hotrods songs to learn
as he lived in Paris, and he played his first gig with us in France
a week later. Rehearsals were held during the soundcheck, and he was marvellous,
but he only lasted about year before deciding he didn't want the hassle
of touring anymore. Gig wise it was all a bit of a blur, backwards and
forwards across the English Channel more times than I can remember. I
even played Amsterdam twice in two months, once at The Paradiso
with the Hotrods and then at the Milky Way with Captain,
which we recorded for a live album.
These trips were often eventful...

At 7am one
Sunday morning Barrie was driving the van off the ferry after an
overnighter to Rotterdam. As we neared the end of the ramp there
was a godawful bang - the cambelt had snapped, completely knackering the
engine. We silently rolled to a halt and up came the old bill. Out got
Bazza, which was a bit of a mistake as he was still pissed from
the night before. Within a few minutes not only had we lost the van but
£200 - they'd done him for drunk driving, thereby fleecing us of
what little cash we had too. We reversed the charges to Leon, our long
suffering promotor, to tell him the good news, cancelled the first gig
and made an SOS call to Bazza's girlfriend to find a new van and
bring it over together with someone to take the old van back. We met her
off the ferry the next day, but the replacement van left a little to be
desired - it had no seats so she had thoughtfully thrown in 4 plastic
garden chairs. For the next three weeks we drove around Holland
and Northern France with our lives in our hands, either being bashed
in the head byequipment from the rear or thrown forward into the front
every time we turned a corner. Never had so many uf us volunteered for
driving duties, it was the only seat secured to the floor. Altogether
now...Never Again!

Meanwhile
I'd been busy songwriting with the Hotrods in mind. Only problem
was we had no guitarist, so early in 1995, on the recommendation of our
agent Alec Leslie I gave Mick Rogers a call. Mick
was the guitarist with Manfred Mann's Earthband and I basically
bribed him into recording the album for nothing, bless 'im. I did a deal
with a label called Creative Man whereby they agreed to pay studio costs
and pay me a bunch of cash upfront for the publishing, and together with
Bazza and Steve we booked into The House in the Woods,
a lovely studio in Surrey converted from a Victorian school, and set about
recording "Gasoline Days". For many reasons it was hard
work, not least because the studio manager was panicking due to the lack
of cheques forthcoming from our new record company to pay the bills. As
the label was in Japan it was a bit hard to call 'em up on the phone,
but they coughed up in the end, and the amount of food on our dinner plates
increased accordingly! Mick did his best and even did a few gigs
with us in the UK and Belgium. However, I personally felt it was all starting
to become a bit of a struggle - even with Captain the dubious charm
of endless touring was wearing thin, and at the same time I noticed a
worsening of the tinnitus I'd developed a few years earlier. Everyday
noises were starting to become uncomfortable, so I decided to wind down
a bit and branch off into other areas, which lead me into production duties
for some great local bands - The Blocked and Spirit of Ecstasy
- and various music workshops for an organisation called CMW.
All good stuff, but when I got a call from a new agent offering
to book a hefty tour for the Hotrods the old bug bit again. In 1996 we
headed out with new guitarist Keyo for a massive 60 dates around
the UK, followed by tours of Holland and France.
Then it was Steve's turn to have had enough, and by the time we
set out for northern Germany the following January (see Diary)
we had a new drummer, Jess, as well. For me it wasn't quite the
same - Steve and I had an innate understanding of each others styles,
he was my best mate in the band and we had gone thru' a lot together over
the years - but I still loved the idea of the Hotrods and
it was hard to let go. The audiences were very appreciative tho', and
that was the main thing. A few months later, however, it was time for
yet another change! Keyo wasn't pulling his weight - I'd
flown back from Sweden where I was doing a series of bass seminars
with some Swedish musician friends. We had a couple of very well paid
blues-rock weekenders lined up in back home, and I'd arranged for Keyo
to pick me up from Heathrow en-route to the first one. But there
was no sign of anyone to meet me at the airport - eventually I called
his flat in Cardiff and to my suprise he picked the phone up. "Oh",
he said airily, "the van had a puncture and I couldn't afford to
fix it". Shit for brains, as they say; there was no way we could
make the gig, it was the other side of the country, altho'a very
pissed-off Bazza had already made his own way there. So - no gig,
and after that no Keyo either. At Barrie's suggestion we recruited
local boy Gary Loker, and at the same time Steve's nephew
Simon came in on drums, as Jess had decided to relocate
to Germany to hitch up with a nice young lady he met whilst we were on
tour there. We made a good team and once again the band was rejuvenated,
and we celebrated by heading out to Sweden for a bunch of midsummer
shows, followed by several bikers festivals in the UK and France.
We always enjoyed playing them, you got treated well, they ran like clockwork,
the audiences were up for it and we always got paid!

It
was around this time that the Captain Sensible Band somehow morphed
into The Damned mark God Knows What - Vanian, Gary Dreadful,
Captain, myself and Monty Moron. There was a particularly unenjoyable
Punkfest in Birmingham where gob once again reigned supreme,
followed by a show I'd arranged in Cardiff with a promotor friend
where Vanian didn't even bother showing up. There were probably
more, I can't even remember now, but the next London gig was to
be my final show with them. There was much confusion and not a little
paranoia surrounding the events - Rat reckoned he legally owned
the name and wanted stupid amounts of money for it so I think The Damned
was prefaced with - "featuring members of"...in
very small print - on the posters to avoid problems. There were
all sorts of threats of injunctions flying about, an estate agent mate
of Vanians was managing the band so I reckon the whole thing was
doomed from the start. Anyway, Vanian turned up at literally the
last minute at the Town and Country Club (after Cardiff
we were seriously wondering if he was gonna turn up at all) and we hit
the stage. For us it was already an unpleasant atmosphere, we felt like
we were being held to ransom by Vanians whims, and for me it was
about to get a whole lot worse. I'd noticed missiles being aimed at us
by certain individuals in the audience, and half way into the set a pint
beaker caught me full on the face. It was only plastic but it was forceful
enough to knock me several feet backwards, I'd been hit many times before
over the years but this was something else. I couldn't play my bass 'cos
it was covered with blood, so I walked offstage leaving Captain
to get on with his solo, figuring I'd get cleaned up and come back on.
When the stage crew went to wipe me down they said it'd gone straight
thru' my lip - it wouldn't stop bleeding and needed stitches.
Sorry guys, no more hero stuff, if I was 18 again maybe it would have
been different, but I was buggered if I was gonna get scarred for a singer
who couldn't be bothered to turn up and a small but dangerously moronic
section of so - called Damned fans. It underlined the fact that
it just wasn't fun any more, at least in this country. I ended up all
night in the hospital, got stitched up, and drove back to Cardiff the
next day mulling over the future. There was a Japanese tour scheduled
the following month, I was up for doing it, but the week before we were
to leave I got a brief note from Vanians spokesman saying he'd
decided to get his wife Patricia Morrison to play bass instead.
It was actually a relief in a way and I guess I was expecting it - the
only thing that upset me was that Captain never got in touch during
this period, seemingly deferring to a man he had little respect for. I
did get a note from him some months later, presumably by way of a peace
offering, saying that I was the best bassist he'd ever be likely to work
with...God, its a funny old group! I'd met Patricia at a couple
of the previous gigs and I really liked her - good luck to her. And to
Captain - it was fun while it lasted - most of the time anyway!

It was time
for a change. I continued with the Hotrods for a while longer,
but it was increasingly stressful for me noise wise, even wearing earplugs.
Its hard to describe what its like to have a constant ringing in both
ears 24 hours a day, and it became compounded by a condition called hyperacusis
- an acute sensitivity to certain frequencies - which in my case made
it almost impossible to spend very long in pubs, thereby
effectively sealing my fate as far as playing live went. Instead I got
together on a songwriting project with Alan Lee Shaw, resulting
in the band Mischief and the album Hubble Bubble to be released
very soon. It really was good to do - no backstabbing, no egos, no bullshit
- and I'm especially pleased with my bassplaying on it! It would have
been nice to have had longer to record it but hey, maybe next time. I've
also just embarked upon an acoustic project - I may even play the occasional
gig, unplugged but earplugged, and rest assured there will be NO DRUMS!

As for today, you can keep checking on my current projects page, and if
one day a cure for tinnitus is discovered, well, who knows...